Killing Rites

Xavier was gone, and I don’t think anyone really got over it. Chapin still won’t talk about it.”

“But you know?”

“We’re priests,” Alexander said with a laugh. “Petty ecclesiastical gossip is what we do.”

“So what went wrong? I mean, I know Ex was sleeping with her, and that she killed herself while he was around. But why didn’t the exorcism work?”

Alexander’s eyes opened, and he looked over at me. His beard really was awful, but if he’d shaved it off, he’d have looked about twelve. No way to win.

“She wasn’t possessed,” he said. “She was a paranoid schizophrenic. There was never anything they could have done for her. Carsey says that her delusions were easy to confuse with the real thing, and Xavier pushed for accepting her case. Apparently he has a kind of thing about saving women he’s attracted to.”

I laughed and I groaned.

“Oh,” I said. “He really does.”

“So Chapin ran her through the rites, and afward, when it was clear they hadn’t done anything useful … she didn’t take it well.”

“Understatement.”

“Yeah.”

“So,” I said, “Ex felt like he’d failed God because he broke his chastity vow. Chapin felt guilty because he hadn’t protected Ex and he hadn’t helped the girl. Had even hurt her, maybe. Wow. Yeah. Clusterfuck. And so here I am, with a real live, no-question-about-it rider. And so I get to be the big chance to go back and do everything right. Everyone gets redeemed.”

“Chapin and Xavier do,” Alexander said. “That’s not exactly everyone.”

“What did the others think?”

“I don’t know, really. By the time they were really putting it on the front burner, I was pretty much out of it, remember?”

That was right. It hadn’t actually been a week since Ex and I had walked up to the blue doors at San Esteban. And probably not an hour after that before the wind demon had gotten free. My whole time with Alexander before this had been those few minutes before Chapin had come out of their ongoing rite and Carsey and Alexander had gone in.

My fingers started tapping against the armrest. I shifted in my seat, my bruised rib aching but not screaming with pain. I put myself in the past. How exactly had it gone? Father Chapin had come out. Alexander and Carsey had gone in. And the wind demon had broken free. Something was shifting in the back of my mind.

“How much do you remember about the wind demon getting loose?” I asked.

“Not lots,” Alexander said. “We were doing the long form. It’s very effective, but it’s also a real pain. Chapin always says that running a marathon’s easier. You have to trade off. No one person has the strength to go through that form of the rite alone. But we’d traded off a dozen times before. We’re good at working in shifts. Only when Carsey and I got in, it was loose. We tried to get it back under control, but it didn’t go too well. And then …”

He gestured to his chest. And then it had tried to kill him, only I’d come in. And the Black Sun inside me had saved me and them and—in particular—Ex. As a reward, we’d beaten her until she broke and tried to rip her apart. We, meaning Chapin and Ex and the others, but mostly meaning me. It hadn’t seemed like a shitty thing to do at the time.

Ozzie sighed in her sleep. She seemed pleased. Caught her dream rabbit, maybe.

“Has Carsey ever had a rider?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” Alexander said. “I mean, that happens sometimes. Occupational hazard. Carsey’s problem is women.”

“Really?”

“Every couple of years, he goes off for a few days, comes back, and gets stuck with weeks of penance. He always seems to feel really bad about it. And from what I hear, he’s getting better at holding out against it.”

“Carsey, though? Really? I pegged him for gay.”

“Oh no,” Alexander said. His voice was getting weaker. “Effeminate, sure, but he’s about as heterosexual as a celibate gets. Tamblen’s gay. Miguel gets drunk sometimes and blasphemes. Tomás used to gamble, but he went to some kind of heavy-duty rehab for it and he seems good now. Chapin struggles against wrath. A lot. We’re human. We’re flawed. We do the best we can.”

“What about you?” I asked, and he chuckled.

“I think maybe there isn’t a God,” he said.

The pause lasted for hours.

“You’re shitting me,” I said. “You’re an atheist?”

“No. I’m a believer who suffers doubt.”

“But you’re in a hotel room with for sure one rider, and waiting for at least one more. By yourself. No backup. And, no offense, but you’re still kind of messed up. That’s a lot of faith for someone without much faith.”

He shrugged.

“If I’d been more sure of myself, I might not have come. I’ve always wanted my own Nineveh,” he said. And then: “You know, if it’s okay, I think I need to sleep a little.”

“You bet,” I said. “I’ll keep watch.”

“Thank you,” he said, then pulled the covers around him in a rough cocoon and closed his eyes. Ten minutes later, he was snoring. The heater clicked on, followed shortly after by the smell of burning dust. I wished I had my laptop. It wasn’t even midnight. The other rider might not come before morning, but if it did, I wanted to be awake for it. Fatigue plucked at me, my body trying to convince me that maybe just shutting my eyes for a minute wouldn’t be such a bad idea. I went to the bathroom and washed my face and hands in cold water. I paced the five steps between the closet and the door. I fought to stay alert.

Somewhere out there, Ex was looking for me. Part of it was that he cared about me, but somewhere along the line, I’d come to mean something else to him. I’d become a symbol. Maybe it had happened in Chicago. Maybe all the way back in Denver. I was his chance to make things right with the girl he’d failed. And now I’d vanished. As far as he knew, I was totally controlled by my rider and I’d started picking off Chapin’s priests. I wondered how hard it would be for him, thinking that his second chance was slipping away. Only I kind of knew. I thought about calling him, telling him everything was going to be all right. It wouldn’t have helped, though.

The weeks we’d spent together, just the two of us, started to seem different now. At the time, I’d been so scared and so frightened. And guilty. And he’d been there to make all the decisions, call all the shots. It was classic, really. He needed a damsel in distress. I needed a knight in shining armor. Our pathologies fit together like a hand in a glove. The only surprise was that we hadn’t ended up in bed together, and even that had been a near thing. I wondered if it would have been different if he hadn’t slept with Isabel. Being head-shy about her could have been the thing that kept us one step back from the edge. If he’d slipped into my bed back at that condo in the ski valley—

Except if he hadn’t slept with Isabel, everything would be different. He wouldn’t have left Chapin’s cabal in the first place. He wouldn’t have met Eric or been there to lend a hand when I first got in trouble. He would never have been part of my little constructed family. And without him, I wouldn’t have gotten out of Chicago at all.

The guy next door turned off his television. I heard the water running in the bathroom next door. A bath or a shower or shaving. That anonymous intimacy felt strange. I could put my hand against the wall and know that two, maybe three feet away, someone was going through the private motions of their night, just as if I weren’t there. The wind rattled the door, and Ozzie stretched, yawned, and went back to sleep. Alexander’s breath was deep and regular, and there was a little color coming back to his cheeks. I picked up my phone—almost midnight—and checked my e-mail. Three pieces of spam and a Pink Martini fan newsletter I’d signed up for last year and never unsubscribed from. The temptation to call someone—anyone—was almost overpowering. If not Ex, then Chogyi Jake. Or Aubrey. Or Kim. My little brother, Curtis. My old boyfriend from college whom I didn’t even want to talk to. Some other human voice.

I’d had three families, really. My real one first: mother, father, Curtis, and Jay, and with them all my friends and enemies at church and school. Then college, and the intimate little circle around my boyfriend and his